[AktiviX-discuss] [Fwd: [tachanka-announce] Tachanka! update and maintenance]

[scott]

this includes lists.aktivix.org

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [tachanka-announce] Tachanka! update and maintenance


Hello!

You are currently making use of services hosted on a Tachanka! vserver,
so we thought you'd be interested to find out more. We also have some
important service announcements to make.

***********************************
1. About Tachanka!
2. Service announcement - downtime
3. How to contribute
  A. North America
  B. Europe
  C. Elsewhere
4. Future maintenance
5. Communications and feedback
***********************************


1. About Tachanka!

Tachanka! is an idea. It's the idea of providing technical services to
emancipatory projects and groups of political change. Tachanka! is also
the groups of people behind this. There are many overlapping collectives
that help to maintain the projects running on our vservers, with many
little contributions helping to keep the projects going.

Examples of the types of service we host include: listservs, internet
relay chat, drupal hosting, static web hosting (with secure ftp access),
mediawiki hosting, news site mirroring (for a number of different
indymedia sites), tor hosting (anonymous web browsing proxy).

* * * * *

2. Service announcement - downtime

On Saturday, 22 September 2007, we are planning some routine maintenance
of the main server. This will require downtime for all hosted projects -
we hope lasting only a few minutes whilst we reboot. Maintenance will
begin at 16:00 UTC and will be finished by 22:00 UTC at the absolute latest.

NOTE: we do not expect the downtime for individual projects to last more
than a short period of time (probably just a few minutes and certainly
no more than 1 hour).

In the event of problems, notifications will be sent to
tachanka-announce [at] lists.riseup.net - you are highly recommended to
join this list!

* * * * *

3. How to contribute

Unfortunately, all of the services provided from the Tachanka! servers
cost money to run - to pay for the electricity, the bandwidth and new
computer parts. We need to raise money now to help us pay for the coming
year.

How to donate
-------------

There are two ways that you can donate, depending on where you live.

A. If you live in North America, you can pay online direct to our
hosting providers, mayfirst.org. Alternatively, you can send them a
cheque. The invoice number is '2001' and the details are at:

	http://mayfirst.org/dues

Cheques should be made payable to 'Mayfirst' and indicate that it is on
behalf of Tachanka! - again, with the invoice number. The address is:

	May First/People Link
	PO Box 1814
	New York, NY 10159

** IMPORTANT: please remember to indicate on your payment it is for
** 'Tachanka!' with an invoice number of 2001, and also let us know by **
sending an email to: hosting at tachanka.org

B. If you live in Europe, you can pay in euros or pounds sterling.
Please contact us at hosting at tachanka.org indicating how much you would
like to contribute and what country you are based in, and someone will
respond to you with details of how to transfer the money. Alternatively,
you may pay directly with paypal using the Mayfirst/Peoplelink details
above.

C. If you live somewhere else, you are still able to contribute! You may
still be able to donate using one of the above methods, or it may be
better to give your donation to a local project that is doing great work
(in the spirit of mutual aid). Alternatively, you may be able to offer
help with support, translations or other skills such as technical
knowledge.

* * * * *

4. Future maintenance

The main Tachanka! server has been coping admirably with a heavy
workload over the past year. However, it could certainly use some fine
tuning - and, if possible, we would also like to expand. For these
reasons, it may become necessary to do further work which would require
short periods of downtime for individual projects hosted on the server.
If this was to be decided, we would of course inform you in advance.

* * * * *

5. Communications and feedback

Thus far, we will be the first to admit that we have not been the best
at communicating! However, we are trying to improve that with this email
update and hope to do better in the future. You may also wish to contact
us, or to discuss issues with other users of Tachanka! services: details
of different ways to do these things are on our contact page:

	https://www.tachanka.org/contact/

Feedback on the service that we provide is also appreciated - friendly
suggestions for improvement, technical thoughts, stuff we could do
better, or just simply letting us know that we're doing the right thing
and providing you with exactly what you want.

* * * * *

We thank you in advance for your support and look forward to
collectively working into the future!

Solidarity,

The Tachanka! Collective


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